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THE DRONES CLUB OF BELGIUM |
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Speeches |
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WODEHOUSE AND FLYING Door Bart Pepermans |
Millfleet Hall, 4 november 2000
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A nice week ago, our honourable chairman mr. Kris Smets, mailed me a gentle, though firm request to prepare a small talk about the links between the subject of our dinner (flying) and the works of P.G. Wodehouse.
The first thing that came in my mind was : how for Plumsake can I manage such a difficult task ? I had no time to reread the 100 works that Wodehouse left us, in search of some links between his characters and 'flying'.
In my mind I could not retrieve a single passage that includes a trip by an airplane. So I nearly gave it up, but then I came to one last solution: I could consult my Wodehousian friends all over the world to give me some hints.
When I asked mr. Tom Kreitzberg, an American Eminence Grise on Wodehouse, to help me, he answered: 'I suppose it's too late to change the subject of the dinner to "rail travel"...'
These are the results of my research :
Many Wodehouse-connaisseurs thought that Wodehouse never mentioned 'flying in airplanes' in his stories. This would be quite understandable, because the writer never took a plane in his life. He was afraid of flying, and always preferred ocean liners for cross-Atlantic travel. After his emigration to America he nearly travelled at all, because he disliked travelling ! I could not retrieve any biographical references that PGW ever took a plane for a trip in America.
My first thought connecting Wodehouse with flying was the novel 'Pigs Have Wings' first printed in 1952. But the title doesn't refer to "fly like an airplane does". It refers to a rhyme of the famous Lewis Carroll, entitled 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'. We can read this piece of poetry in the Lewis Carroll' novel 'Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There' (1872). The poem counts 18 verses and this is the most important for us, Wodehousians:
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
And now the real 'flying in airplanes' stuff! Well, the connaisseurs were wrong. There are really some references to 'flying' in the works of Wodehouse:
(1) In 'Lord Emsworth and Others' (1937) we can read the short story 'There's Always Golf'. The character named Clarice Fitch "used to fly across oceans and things."
It's just a passing reference, no details given.
(2) In 'Very Good Jeeves' (1930), more precisely in the short story 'The Spot of Art', Bertie legs it to Paris to escape certain disaster, and hangs about there until he gets the "all clear" from Jeeves to return. When he finally arrives, Bertie explains: "I hopped on to a passing aeroplane and a couple of hours later was bowling through Croyden on my way to the centre of things."
(3) 'Bachelor's Anonymus' is one of his last novels, published in 1973. In the first chapter Ivor Llewellyn makes an ocean cross by plane, though he is known as a fervent ship traveller. Mr. Trout, his lawyer, is seeing him of at the Los Angeles airport. Wodehouse describes their relationship as follows: 'Mr Trout had handled all Mr Llewellyn's five divorces and this formed a bond. There is nothing like a good divorce for braking down the barriers between lawyer and client. It gives them something to talk about.'
(4) In the second part of 'A Man of Means', a book he wrote in joint authorship with C. H. Bovill and was edited in 1991, the hero, Roland Bleke, a person of intense ordinariness, escapes by bribing the pilot of a plane to get him away from the area.
(5) In 'The Parrot and Other Poems', an edition of 1988, there is the poem "All About the Aerial Derby", which is about the balloon race across England sponsored by Gordon Bennett in 1906. Athough the Wright Brothers had made their first flight a few years before, ballooning was still considered by many to be the only practicable form of aviation.
(6) The last example I could find isn't an explicit one. You can find it in 'Service With a Smile' (1961). Myra Schoonmaker has been engaged with the Reverend Cuthbert Bailey. As usual, her step-mother Lady Constance can't agree with Myra's choice. She telegraphs to the father of Myra (her husband), James Schoonmaker, who stays in America, and asks him for help. One or two days later, he arrives on Blandings Castle. He can't have done this by ship, and I assume that transatlantic flights in 1961 were not unusual.
Wodehouse never mentioned the flight explicitly, but the fast cross of James
Schoonmaker gives us no other explanation.
Richard Usborne once called this fact 'an anachronism', but he probably
overlooked the possibility of an airplane-cross.
The quotation marks round "flying", lead us to the more metaphorical senses of the word.
First of all numerous birds are mentioned in his books and one bat that I know of!
In 'Love Among the Chickens' (1906) Ukridge runs a chickenfarm; in the short story 'Jeeves and the Impending Doom' out of 'Very Good, Jeeves!' (1930) Bertie Wooster and the Hon. A.B. Filmer are pursued by a hissing swan; there is the famous parrot-story in 'Uncle Fred Flits By', a short story out of 'Young Men in Spats' (1936);In 'Leave it to Psmith' (1923), when Psmith and his lady love are in a cottage in the woods, he sees a dead bat on the floor of the cottage. He covers it with his handkerchief saying "Someone's Mother!!'.
Wodehouse even wrote an essay about the decay of falconry, in which he explains why falconry and hawking as a pastime has lost his hold on the British public. We can find this essay in 'Louder & Funnier' (1932).
Some of Wodehouse's more lovable characters belong to a London club called the Pelican Club, and so we can find several more examples of 'birds' appearing in Plum's stories!
And what about "flying" in the wider sense of "running away"? The examples are as numerous as the braincells of Jeeves !
Think of Bertie running away from his various female entanglements; Bingo Little dodging his creditors in 'The Inimitable Jeeves' (1923); Gussie Fink-Nottle in scarlet tights rushing round London in 'Right ho, Jeeves' (1934); the pursuit of George Mulliner across fields in 'The Truth about George' from 'Meet Mr Mulliner' (1927); and if you want to read about all the other "fly for your life - all is discovered" examples, I'll give you the 20 sheets of paper after my talk!
Finishing my talk, we could put that "flying" is also the ultimate boysdream, the desire of breaking the rules, to control a kite or to build castles in the air. The work that Wodehouse left us contains a lot of (unfullfilled) boysdreams. He showed us reality through glasses of fiction and relativity. He lifted up the banality of life to magnificent intrigues.
But let me finish with an article that appeared in the Washington Post of the 29 of october 2000. It could have been a result of the Wodehouse-brain, but it isn't fiction, it is reality ! The article is entitled 'When Pigs Fly, They Go 1st Class':
Philadelphia, Oct. 28; The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether US Airways followed its own policy on letting animals aboard passenger jets when it permitted a 300-pound pig to fly first class from here to Seattle earlier this month.
Two women signed up to transport the animal by saying it weighed 13 pounds, but they needed help to wheel the porker aboard Flight 107 on Oct. 17.
The pig slept most of the way in the aisle in front of the first row in the first-class cabin, but trouble developed when the aircraft taxied into Seattle. Squealing loudly, the excited pig charged through the aircraft, then tried to break into the cockpit, according to the airline's report of the incident. After that, it fouled the jetway, the report said.
US Airways spokesman Rick Weintraub declined to comment on the FAA probe, except to confirm that the pig did fly first class on the Boeing 757. "There are no further developments," he said, "nothing further to say!"
The Empress shouldn't be living at this hour!!!